


Darkest Timeline

by coraxes



Series: Author's Favorites [6]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, POV Second Person, Time Travel, spoilers through reunion tour part 2, written pre-stolen century so some stuff is inaccurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 06:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10508151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coraxes/pseuds/coraxes
Summary: Magnus takes the temporal chalice up on its offer.Inspired by the latest TTAZZ.





	

**Author's Note:**

> hahahahahaha yeah.
> 
> this has been thoroughly jossed by the canon timeline--I wrote it while reunion tour was airing--but whatever

So here’s the thing--I really, really want to do this.  I want to take the Chalice.

_I know._

And Julia wouldn’t want me to.  But Julia’s not here.

I take the cup.

_(“WHAT--”_

_“MAGNUS NO--”)_

_Magnus, you place your hands on the Chalice, just below June’s.  It’s warmer than the metal should be, and right before June lets go she looks up at you and gives you this radiant smile, like you’ve made her the happiest girl on the planet.  Her hands fall away and then she looks at you, confused._

_“Where would you like to go, Magnus?”  the cup asks.  It doesn’t sound like June anymore.  You know that voice; you heard it just a moment ago.  But why would it sound like Julia?_

Who gives a shit what the cup sounds like?  Take me back to where we were before.  I was about to leave and I said--

“I love you, Jules.”

_You’re standing by that chair in Steven’s house, and you’re looking at Julia--your wife, the love of your life, a woman you only hoped to be reunited with in death.  And Steven, your mentor, the man who brought you up from nothing._

I--

_One more thing, Magnus: You remember._

I remember.

Oh god.  Oh god the relics and the hunger and Barry Taako Lup Merle Davenport _Lucretia--_

_Julia looks at you, frowning.  “Magnus?  Are you alright?”_

_That’s your wife in front of you--and remember, if you get too close to the original timeline, you_ will _lose this.  It will all go back to the way it was before._

You know what?  Fuck it.  All I do is hit things and--no.  They can do this without me.

I smile at her.  “I’m fine, Jules.  Everything’s gonna be fine.”

_And it is, for a while._

_You cancel your trip and scour the town until you find one of Calen’s spies.  Forewarned and forearmed, Ravensroost defeats Calen once more.  You lead the charge, but it’s Julia who hacks off his head.  You asked her not to fight--you can’t lose her_ again-- _but she just laughs at you, and then scolds you when she realizes you’re serious._

_Point is:  Calen is dead, and the sex afterwards is pretty fucking fantastic._

_(You cry, but that’s not abnormal for you, so even though you know Julia’s worried--her nose crinkles like a rabbit’s--she doesn’t say anything.)_

_Years pass, and it’s a good life.  You try not to think of your friends and what they might be doing right now, how many times they have died in search of a stop to the Hunger.  After some time, you and Julia start trying to have children, but it never happens.  Maybe it’s you, or her, or maybe it’s just bad luck.  You get a dog instead, and name her Luna._

_Then one day reports start coming in.  Disasters that are anything but natural.  A flock of orcs suddenly spawning in Neverwinter.  An entire town turned to peppermint candy.  Thousands of corpses rising from a mass grave._

_You know it’s the relics.  But it’s too close and what if the timelines come back together?  What if you lose everything again?_

_But Ravensroost, isolated from everything but news, is never touched by the relics._

_And then the weirdest thing happens--one day you wake up and all the knowledge you had?  Everything about the relics, the hunger, your friends?  It’s just gone._

Wait, what?

_Somewhere, the Voidfish has just had a very large snack.  Not that it matters to you, of course._

_After that morning, it’s as if a weight has been lifted off your shoulders.  The reports of unnatural disasters stop coming in.  Julia notices the change, says you look lighter, asks what brought it on._

“I’m just happy.  I’m here with you, why wouldn’t I be?”

_She laughs and flicks your nose, and for the first time in years you can’t care about what-ifs._

_So: more time passes.  Steven dies, peacefully in his sleep.  You mourn but your life goes on, the two of you and your dog, and then Julia decides to get a goldfish.  Your carpentry starts to sell more and more.  You stop being Magnus the hero and start being Magnus the carpenter._

_And then one day, the sky turns black._

_It doesn’t take long for everything to go to hell.  From black sky to tarlike columns oozing onto the ground--_

No no no _no_ they should be able to _stop_ this--

_I’m going to tell you a secret.  There’s no way you could know this, Magnus, because you don’t even know who they are right now.  But Taako and Merle?  They’re dead._

…what?

_Oh, they made a good show of it.  Phandolin was saved--Taako argued, pretty persuasively, that they should leave Kurtze locked up, and Killian took out Gundren before he could nuke the place.  But Merle turned to crystal in Lucas’s lab.  Taako gave up in Wonderland.  He’s a lich now, so technically he’s still kicking, but--_

Taako would never--

_Wouldn’t he?  To save his own skin?  Oh, I’m sure he’s trying now--he can remember everything, after all.  But it’s a bit difficult for him to reach the Bureau of Balance at the moment._

_Here’s what I’m telling you, Magnus: You’re fucked._

_And that’s before the Hunger arrives._

_You can’t see them, of course, but they’re there.  They attack the townspeople in waves.  You and Julia make a good go of it, but there’s only so much you can do to monsters that you can’t see.  Especially because they never seem to run out._

_You see it quite clearly, though, when something runs Julia through._

JULIA--

_She falls to the ground, blood pouring from the wound in her gut._

I was supposed to _save_ her--

_You knew, didn’t you?  As soon as you went back you knew this could happen._

I try to cover the wound, I look for a potion, anything--

She’s dying she’s dying I thought I could save her, the world is _ending_ and Julia’s dying again--

_You can still save the world, Magnus._

_If you don’t want to be here anymore, the timeline will collapse.  You can’t seriously say that you want to be here._

If I go back, she’ll be dead.

_She’s already--_

no

_She’s gone, Magnus._

no no no

_You can fix this._

_Her blood is still warm on your hands, but the blade that runs you through is ice cold._

_Suddenly you can’t feel your legs, can’t feel anything below the blade in your spine.  Come on now, Magnus.  You don’t have much time left._

You win.  You win, alright, take me back you sick fuck--

_You stand in an abandoned mine under Refuge.  The Temporal Chalice falls from your hands and lands, with a clatter, on the ground._

**Author's Note:**

> in case it's not clear, i was trying to capture the feel of the actual podcast with the narration--griffin and travis describing their characters, with griff occasionally giving out non-pov stuff. i know, it's odd, but that's how i thought of the fic so i decided to give it a shot. i hope it turned out okay.
> 
> aaaand re: magnus having his memories--okay, here's what i figured. when magnus time-travels back, he retains his own memories, right? but once he's in the past, it's before the void fish was ever used to block memories, so suddenly he has all of those back. and theeeen he reaches the point in the timeline where lucretia feeds their logs to the void fish, so he loses that knowledge again.


End file.
